What Does Every Holiday Really Celebrate?

What if every holiday you’ve ever celebrated was really about one thing? New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, Easter, the Fourth of July, and all the rest. What if they were all about the same thing, or more specifically, the same person? Is there anyone or anything that could capture the rich diversity of all the festivities? What if every one of these holidays points to the same moment in history? Let’s pretend we are Jews from 2000 years ago, and we’re going to go back and look at our calendar year, filled with its many diverse and beautiful feasts and celebrations, and ask ourselves a few questions about these new arrivals calling themselves Christians, and you have just become one yourself.

Go back two thousand years as a Jewish person, and your calendar revolved around seven major feasts. The Jewish life was, and is, structured around seven major celebrations. Passover kicked off the new year, followed immediately by Unleavened Bread and First Fruits, while Pentecost, Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles carried us through the rest of the year. Life without these celebrations would have seemed as hollow as a household, today, that never celebrated Christmas, Thanksgiving, or even the Super Bowl—stripped of joy and connection to everything that mattered to the society in which you live.

Now let me invite you into a thought experiment. Imagine you were a Jewish Christian from that first generation of believers—someone who grew up with circumcision, Passover, the Day of Atonement, and the whole nine yards of all things Jewish. You are now Christian. Your Messiah has come, and His church is growing, but there is a nagging problem you cannot shake: so many calling themselves Christians do not understand anything Jewish. They eat the wrong food, they are far too active on the Sabbath, and they sing the wrong songs. Not one knows a word of the great Hallel!

This seems completely unacceptable—like an American who has never heard of George Washington, cannot recognize the Statue of Liberty, and has no idea who Babe Ruth played for. American in name only. Surely these Gentile Christians must be believers in name only, because they know nothing about Moses, the one who led your people out of slavery by means of a blood sacrifice. How can Gentiles understand blood and deliverance unless taught Passover?

But this is only the beginning of your concerns. Right after Passover, Jews observe Unleavened Bread, and for thousands of years the removal of leaven has reminded God’s people of His removal of sin from their lives. These Gentile Christians have no method of learning how God removes sin from believers.

Your frustration grows as you think about First Fruits—right on the heels of deliverance and separation from sin, you always observed this “resurrection” by returning to God the first products of a new crop. For the first time, reenacted each year, you could offer something coming out of the ground, made acceptable to Him through no merit of your own: your first good thing, your first fruit.

Your Jewish calendar is so full of theological truths that calling these non-Jewish Christians your equals feels dangerous and watered down. If these three holy days were everything, you might not be so spun up, but the church year is not even half over.

First Fruits is followed by Pentecost, and these people call themselves Christians without knowing anything about arguably the second most important event in world history, the Red Sea event culminating with the giving of the law! God gave Moses His law at Sinai, constituting the people of God around the giving of the Ten Commandments. That moment is burned into every Jewish heart. How can anyone call themselves Christian and not know about Moses and the Ten Commandments?

Consider the Feast of Trumpets—this highly underrated gem celebrates God’s final judgment, all nations summoned before His throne, and the verdict read aloud. What is that verdict? You win and your enemies lose! Who does not want to hear that year after year? Yet the Gentiles know nothing of it.

So many great holidays. Celebrate them! All of them.

The Day of Atonement remains a favorite for many. As the year winds down, the High Priest goes to a special place, blood is shed, collective forgiveness is powerfully demonstrated. God forgives because of the sacrifice behind the veil. How are you ever going to be anchored in certainty without knowing about Atonement?

Tabernacles. The last big celebration of the year. Can you at least put that one on your calendar? For forty years God demonstrated His attachment to us by being visibly present in a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Every year families spent a week in a tent, remembering the wilderness wandering, much like Americans today who go camping. How much is lost when you only celebrate Jesus? Tabernacles imparts God’s intimate presence.

So here you are, living in a time when God’s salvation is spreading rapidly, yet so many are missing the theology of vicarious sacrifice, an offering that removes sin, a return to life, a blessed people under divine law, a victorious nation confident in coming acquittal, forgiveness both personal and collective, and the assurance that God is with us, among us, even in us. A calendar filled with a gloriously blessed and divine diversity of who God is and how he reveals himself.

How can this diverse abundance be found in one man? How can Jesus be everything?

Well… What does every one of these holidays, and every holiday, for that matter, really celebrate?

Here is the answer: every feast, ancient and modern, Jewish and Gentile, celebrates some aspect of the cross.

Jesus is our Passover; the Lamb of God sacrificed for our deliverance. He is our separation from sin, our unleavening. He is our First Fruit, the firstborn from the dead, our only acceptable self.

Pentecost commemorates the Law delivered with thunder and fire at Sinai, but Jesus descends from that other mountain of thunder and fire, Calvary, as the one who perfectly fulfilled the Law on our behalf. What was thunderously delivered as law has been flawlessly fulfilled as Gospel.

The Feast of Trumpets blows a resounding victory, the final judgment declares we have won. That is the announcement of Good Friday.

The Day of Atonement: “It is finished,” entering behind the veil as our ultimate High Priest.

And Tabernacles? Christ is the Word made flesh, pitching His tent among us. The baby in Bethlehem is the consummated Feast of Tabernacles, Immanuel, God with us.

Every ancient feast celebrates the cross. But what about our modern holidays?

Jesus is our New Year, our fresh start every single day. The cross wipes the slate clean.

Valentine’s Day celebrates our true bridegroom, who in His incarnation made Himself one with us, our truest intimacy.

And the Fourth of July? Independence literally means “not hanging from something.” We are no longer hanging on the hook of guilt and condemnation because Jesus hung on the cross for us. Good Friday is the ultimate Independence Day for all humanity.

Pick your holiday. It’s all about the cross of Christ. By Him all things were created, created through Him and for Him. Go through your entire calendar, and you will find Christ crucified hidden in every celebration. Every day is His day; the entire schedule of life organized around that one moment on Golgotha.

Jesus is all things—all things human, all things Jewish, and all things divine.

What does every holiday really celebrate? The cross.

This is the glorious day the Lord has made, and He has filled it, filled it to the brim and even overflowing with Himself, His body and blood.

God bless and goodnight.